Science can be messy

Scheduling the visual cognition study for a Monday was not my idea. I want to be clear about that.

My Mondays are generally uneventful, a chance to relax following a fun-filled weekend. After our usual morning routine, my mother goes to work and I take a nap. I like it that way. It’s certainly better than if I went to work and my mother took a nap, although I’ve gotten a surprising amount of disagreement about that from certain people. Anyway, after my nap, I get to play for a while and have lunch. Then some quiet time while I digest.

Two Mondays ago, my father took me to an infant cognition lab right after lunch. Seemed like bad timing to me. I’m certainly not at my sharpest after a big lunch. My father isn’t either—he got lost. I learned a couple of new words on that trip!

We finally got out of the car, and I got to meet the nice students who work at the cognition lab. They gave me toys to eat in the waiting room while my father filled out paperwork. I tried to explain that I’d rather eat the paperwork, but these students either didn’t understand Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or just didn’t agree with me that eating paperwork is the best route to self-actualization. So I chewed on the toys for a while.

Then we got to go into a different room and stare at a television. They strapped me into a high chair and made me watch a silent movie about a pair of blue squares wandering around a dark room, not doing anything. Sometimes the squares got bigger, sometimes a third square showed up and left again, but in the end nothing happened. Apparently someone saw Waiting for Godot and thought it would be more engaging without any dialogue. I tried imagining what the squares might be talking about, I tried looking around the room to see if this inane movie was holding anyone else’s attention, I tried to remember when I had last eaten, and then, like any good critic, I pronounced judgment on the movie by spitting up on my leg. And the high chair.

That got me out of the high chair.

Apparently, the movie was the experiment. Or more precisely, them watching me watching the movie was the experiment. Did the movie get more exciting when the squares got bigger? Did it get more exciting when the third square showed up? Personally, I think it got more exciting when it finally ended. My parents didn’t raise no Beckett fans.

After everything got cleaned up, they asked if I wanted to be in a pilot study. Oh, yeah, now we’re talking. Forget ground school—I want time in the air! The freedom of three dimensions. The lure of the open sky!

Oh.

A “pilot study” is not what it sounds like.

No airplane, no flight time, just my father reading me a couple of board books while they videotaped us. Yippee.

So when that was done, I spat up on my arm.

Out we went to the waiting room, where I got to spit up on some big cube toy while my father gathered up our stuff. As a reward, the students gave me a new teething toy and said I could keep it! I showed my appreciation by spitting up on their couch.

My father says that when we go to the infant phonology lab in a couple of weeks, he’s bringing a pile of rags and a mop. And that we’re definitely not going on a Monday.